together we agreed that I would visit the principal in an effort to
resolve the problem.

I had only a casual acquaintance with the gentleman who was in
charge of my son's school, but I was hardly prepared for the conversa-
tion that ensued. When he learned why I was in his office, his first
question was, "What are you, a Jew?" I found that inquiry astounding.
I responded by saying, "No, but why do you ask?" He replied, "Well,
you know how they are." This slurring attack on a minority commu-
nity agitated me and I became angry. I called his attention to the fact
that the teacher's actions were a clear violation of constitutional inter-
pretations set forth in 1962 and 1963 by the Supreme Court in the
Engel v. Vitale and Abington v. Schempp cases. He said he knew that to
be the case, but he allowed the violations to continue anyway. I asked
what other lessons in civics he encouraged for the students. Recogniz-
ing that I was not mollified, he told me that if my wife and I insisted,
the actions of the one teacher would be curtailed. However, he added,
our son would suffer if we persisted. Children in the classroom, he
said, would know that our son was responsible for the loss of the Bible
stories. He assured me that our son's classmates would make it uncom-
fortable for the troublemaker. I asked him how the children would
know whose parents had complained. Brashly, he announced that he
would tell them.

I left the school and returned home to discuss the conversation
with my wife, Norma. We both knew the potential price that might
result from any legal action. We had followed the cases of similar
nature that had been decided by the Supreme Court. We knew about
the resulting abuse from school officials, teachers, and citizens in the
community. This was a particularly difficult problem because of our
son's age. How would we explain the complex issues of First Amend-
ment jurisprudence to him?

In the situation facing us, not unlike many of the cases recorded in
this volume, our conflict with the teacher pitted two markedly differ-
ent Christian traditions against each other, in this instance, two dis-
tinct Baptist traditions. Indeed, we are reminded that most of the reli-
gious persecution so common in the American colonies in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries was perpetrated by Protestants in
power against Protestants not in power. That was the case in 1801 in
Connecticut when the established Congregational Church dominated

-16-